The Sleep-over

15-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Friday, February 24, 1911: I tried to get up this morning without awakening my bed fellow, but all in vain. We tried to make her believe she was dreaming of Him. I didn’t have a lesson out for this morning, for I didn’t study any last night, because I wouldn’t very well, but I made up for it some this evening. I managed to get through my lessons somehow. Ruth has gone to a sleighing party, thorough the mud tonight.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Grandma, her sister Ruth, Blanche Bryson, and Edith (last name unknown—but she married Harry Reynolds in April, 1911) had a sleep-over (see yesterday’s posting).

In the late 1800s and early 1900s:

Young women routinely spent the months preceding their marriage almost exclusively with other women—at neighborhood sewing bees and quilting parties or in a round of visits to geographically distant friends and relatives—Ostensibly they went to receive assistance in the practical preparations for their new home—sewing and quilting a trousseau and linen—but of equal importance, they appear to have gained emotional support and reassurance.